The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom (48 page)

“May I help you,
sidala?”

She turned to find a middle-aged
tiger standing before her. His eyes were small – unusual for tigers, who
typically had such large, deep-set, beautiful eyes – and his lips tight
–again, unusual for tigers. In fact, he was rather on the thin side as well
for, unlike herself, most tigers were solid of bone and body, even tending to
pack on the occasional extra pound or two. Tigers were, of all of the Pure
Races, very fond of their suppers.

“Oh, yes,” she said, rather
nervously. “Um, I would like to buy a book…”

She waggled the Governor’s ring
under his nose. He snorted derisively.

“And what sort of book would the
tigress like to purchase on the promise of such unremarkable, undeliverable,
unredeemable credit?”

“I would like a book on…” She
scrambled for words, for truth be told, she had no idea what she was looking
for. Her tongue peeked out the corner of her mouth. “A book on…”

“Yes,
sidala?”

“Fighting.”

“Fighting?”

“Yes. I would like to learn how
to fight.”

For only a heartbeat, there was
silence in the bookstore, until the shopkeep threw back his head and laughed.

In fact, all the patrons of the
bookshop threw back their heads and laughed, and yet again, Fallon Waterford
felt the blood rush to her cheeks. Quite to her surprise, she also found her
fingers curling into her palms, and she wished she were Ursa Laenskaya. No one
would laugh at her then.

“Yes,” she said, her voice
trembling and tight. “A, a book on fighting, and a book on men.”

More laughter now, and she could
hardly bear it, but bear it she would, for she realized that she wanted those
books.

“Fighting…
and
men,” gasped the shopkeep. “Oh my dear
sidalady
tigress, you are a pearl among customers…”

A strange calm fell over the
tigress. She straightened her spine, narrowed her eyes, magined she was a snow
leopard. The laughter soon stopped.

“Warfare books I have,
sidala,
but books on personal fighting?
Of those, I have none
,”
he said,
wiping tears from his eyes. “I cannot help you there. There is a garrison
nearby if you wish tactical training, and of course, several masters of the
Martial Arts of all varieties and temperaments, even here in the
Gardens…”

He seemed to catch himself as he
observed her reaction, cleared his throat, tried to gather his wits about him.

Fascinating
, she thought to herself. A valuable lesson learned. She
folded her arms across her chest.

“Ah my, yes, but books on men…”
He leaned into her. “Those I can help you with…”

He grinned, his tight lips
spreading wide across pointy teeth. She shuddered. She did not like this bookseller.
Not one bit.

“Back here,
sidala.
I have an entire room of books for such ‘particular’
tastes…”

With a snort, she followed him
through a wall of beads and shells, into a dark, dimly lit alcove full of books
with dark covers. He pulled several down off different shelves and passed them
to her.

“See here,
sidala,
these even have illustrations that show you what to do and
how…”

She was a booklover. She was a
Scholar in the Court of the Empress. She was a student of feline anatomy and
physiology. It took several moments for her to realize that she was not looking
at fine literature or volumes of poetry or treatises into the souls of the male
cat. In fact, it wasn’t until she had studied page after page of illustrations
that her emerald eyes began to grow round, and her heart leapt into her throat.

“But you,
sidala,
seem to me a woman of class and taste, not simply a female
indulging in the lusts of the flesh. So for you, this here is the most
beautiful of all, a book of poetry and love, illustration and conjugation,
romance, art and skill all bound in one miraculous work…”

With trembling hands, the
shopkeep handed her a small leather-bound text, blood-red in colour, with gold
leaf. “It is a copy of an Ancient manuscript, transliterated and re-illustrated
for the Upper Kingdom. It is called
‘The
KhamaShuthra.’
If you know this book, you will know all you need to know
about men.”

She held it in wonder. She had
heard rumors of this book, a book of love and love-making. It was forbidden in
the University, where male and female lived and studied together in purity the
pursuit of more ascetic, cerebral things. But holding it, here and now, feeling
the soft suede under her fingertips, the delicate rice-paper parchment that
crackled with the turn of each page, the organic tang of the ink and the
colors, oh the colors of the graphic illustrations, she felt the whispers of
possibility and danger and the power of life, and she saw the dancing blue eyes
of Kerris Wynegarde-Grey, his taunting smile and strong, graceful body, and she
realized that she wanted this book, more than anything she had wanted in a very
long time.

“I’ll take it,” she managed to
say, in a voice not quite her own. And he wrapped it up in dark paper and a
string, and she slipped out of the bookshop through a back door, not entirely
certain that she should be walking in sunlight at the moment. The shadows would
be much safer.

***

She found him on the third floor
of one of the older buildings in the
Gardens
.
It was a much older building, to be sure, its window glass dark and stained to
minimize the afternoon sun, and she found herself approving. Alchemists were
creatures of shadow, after all, of night and secrets and moonlight. Sunshine
was an unwelcome diversion.

In fact, there was nothing
announcing his shop as anything other than a room for supplies or stores. There
was no sign, no half-open door, no table of wares out in the front. There was,
however an ankh, painted in red on the door post, a sign for those seeking, and
she did not knock when she went in.

The room was filled with incense.

“You have something to leave with
me?” the old tiger asked, not looking up from his stool where he sat, dipping
candles in the dark.

“For the First Mage alone.”

“He follows at
Sri’Gujar’Rhath.”

“Of course.”

Black-clad hands reached down to
a large copper pot, dusty and lidded, at his feet. He blew the dust off,
smoothed the cobwebs from its surface, flicked at the many spiders scrabbling
for cover, and turned to present it to her. She began to reel in silken threads,
attached to the red satin pouch bobbing ominously over her head. She caught it
up in her hands and raised it to her lips.

He watched with incurious yellow
eyes the silver smoke escape its hiding place. He had seen it all before. He
had done it himself. It was no mystery to him.
Agara’tha
had taught him many things.

The silver smoke then made the
journey from her lips to his copper pot, whirling and leaping like a sea of
white horses. Before it could find its way out, he slipped the lid securely in
place, and lowered it back to the floor at his feet.

“Anything else?” he asked
somberly.

“Fire powder. As much as you can
spare.”

And with her package securely
under her arm, she left the third floor of the old market building, the little
red pouch following, small and insignificant, in her wake.

***

“They don’t look like much.”

Kerris rolled his eyes but he did
not look up at his brother, merely kept running his hands down along the long
fine legs.

“They’re not supposed to
look
like much, Kirin. They’re supposed
to work like much. And believe me, they do.” He ran his palm around to the
fetlock and the animal obediently raised his foot off the ground. “Look, see?
Feet as sound as any you’ll see in the Royal Stables, I’ll wager. And that’s
the first thing that’s going to give out in the Dry Provinces, their feet.”

He straightened up, his hands
moving all up the stallion’s body, from the shoulder to the whither to the
back. He gave the creature a friendly pat. It laid its ears back and nipped at
him.

“They’re all like this. Perfect
for where we’re going.”

Kirin was clearly skeptical. He
stood outside the roped-off pen, hands on hips, brows low and dark.

“But look at their backs –
so short. Not a comfortable ride.”

“But stronger, more durability.”

“And those nostrils – I’ve
never seen anything so huge.”

“Perfect for breathing in great
chestfuls of desert air.”

“And their necks. Why such a
crest?”

“Heads’ carried high, to scout
out the terrain.”

“They’re such small things.
There’s almost no muscle. It’s all tendon and sinew.”

“Less muscle, less bulk,
therefore less food needed. More efficient on the trail.”

Kirin sighed. “I don’t like the
tails. They’re higher set than Imperial horses, and stringy.”

Kerris shook his head, his
exasperation finally spilling out. “Now there you have me, brother. Sorry, my
handsome beast, we simply can’t afford to be seen riding a horse with a stringy
tail, now can we?”

“How is the Seer going to sit
such a horse, Kerris? He has legs of a cheetah! They’ll fairly drag along the
ground!”

The grey lion stepped out of the
way of the desert stallion. “We don’t have to take them, Kirin. If you really
don’t like them…”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like
them.”

“And if you really don’t trust my
judgment in terms of horseflesh…”

“Kerris, no one has judgment like
yours.”

“I’m sure our present horses will
be sound.” He swung his arm around to another ring, where three mares and foals
stood, watching them. “And the mares’ milk paste, well, we’ll just have to make
certain there are plenty of animals along the route for us to kill and eat, eh?
I’m sure that won’t be a problem. The desert is always so obliging.”

He turned to the lynx who was
waiting on them. “Sorry,
sidi,
my
brother is not impressed. Perhaps another day…”

And he slipped out from under the
rope and left the stockyard, his night-blue cloak snapping in his wake, leaving
Kirin, the lynx and a dozen desert horses under the
KhahBull
sun.

Kirin frowned and studied the
horses, whose long, stringy manes and tails waved like banners in the hot wind.
True, they were a scrappy-looking lot, small and fine-boned and far too lean
for his liking, but then again, everything Kerris had said was true. It was his
own preference for large, solid Imperial horses. His life and those of his men
had been won or lost on the backs of such animals. These, these were a gamble,
indeed.

He stepped around to the ring
holding the mares, and a young bay colt peered out at him from his mother’s
side.
Such large, round eyes,
thought
Kirin.
But intelligence, yes, it was
obvious. Even in one so young.

“Hello,” he said quietly, smiling
a small smile at the colt, and the little beast tossed its head defiantly, but
did not budge. Kirin’s smile grew. “Aren’t you fierce, yes? A fierce wild young
stallion? Should I be afraid?”

The fierce wild young stallion
raked the ground with tiny hoofs and snorted.

“He likes you,” said a voice, and
the Captain turned to see the Scholar, ambling up to him, her striped hair
rising and falling in the growing wind, a small dark package tucked under one
arm.

He smiled at her, and for the
first time this day, it did not feel forced.

“I’m not convinced ‘like’ is the
right word for it,
sidala.
But they
are a fascinating lot. Kerris wants us to buy them.”

“Oh.” She cast her emerald eyes
across the make-shift paddock. “They look like they’d be good in the desert.
And I have no desire to be riding a khamel for weeks on end. Their spines are
worse than yaks.”

“Good point,
sidala.”
And he turned to the lynx, an older, grizzled cat with
squinty wise eyes and rough hands. The wind was lifting his silver hair as
well, and Kirin noticed the vague twist of warning in the pit of his stomach.
This wind had not been here earlier. “My brother is usually right about such
animals. We’ll take the lot. I trust their tack is included?”

“I will ensure it myself,
sidi.”
And he bowed, not quite formally,
but acceptably, nonetheless.

“Have them ready to leave at
first light tomorrow morning, at the Governor’s stables, if you will.”

As he turned to leave, he was
assaulted at the sight of the sky. There were huge dark clouds moving from the
north like an approaching army. He frowned as the wind whipped his sash about
his waist, and he noticed the ropes encircling the horses begin to snap and
dance. The horses themselves were growing agitated, and one need only look at
the sky to tell why.

“Where is Kerris?” he muttered.

For some reason, he looked to the
tigress, but she shrugged. It was all she could do to keep her hair out of her
eyes and her package in her grasp. He looked to the lynx, who was still waiting
patiently. Patience, it seemed, was a virtue of lynx. He stood like a statue.
But Kirin realized the reason the man was squinting was to keep the tiny bits
of desert dust out of them. They were carried on this new breeze like daggers.
He looked to the market place just outside the stockyards, vendors closing up
shops, pulling colorful awnings across their market stands, wrapping
merchandise with linens and tarps. The sky over the
Waterless Gardens
had quickly grown dark, covered in those swiftly
moving clouds, now an almost greenish black like a bleeding of
masi
ink over a too-wet page.

Kirin looked back at the lynx.

“Are storms common this time of
year?”